Blogging has been pretty mainstream for over five years now, but ever since Technorati released their recent State of the Blogosphere address, there has been a strong buzz around the blogosphere and the impending death of blogging. This is primarily because of figures showing that about 200 million blogs have been created, but only 7.4 million have published a post in the past 4 months. As this site loosely focuses on blogging, I wanted to share my thoughts and hear what some of your opinions are.
In my personal opinion, I don’t think that blogging is dying at all. My belief is that to many people start a blog for the wrong reasons, or misunderstand the work and commitment associated with blogging. I would say there are currently two primary reasons why most people start blogging:
- Get Rich Quick – I’m not sure why this idea is out there, but there are a ton of people that believe that blogging will make your rich quick. There are of course a number of people that have made a lot of money blogging, but most people who starting blogging now will need time to develop their blogging skills and develop readership before there are any monetary possibilities.
- Personal Blog – This is closer in line with the original intention of blogging. People launch a personal blog where they can talk about whatever they want. Here are family pictures, these are my political opinions, and my favorite sports team won last night! These types of blogs don’t have any focus that would appeal to a large group of people, so they lack readership, which in turn discourages the blogger from putting time into their hobby.
I also think the emergence of microblogging has had a strong influence on people leaving their blogs dormant. Things like tumblelogs, Twitter and Facebook status updates have become very popular, negating what blogging offered to some people. It’s much quicker and serves the same purpose for them.
What is the Future of Blogging?
This is always tough to gauge, so you kind of need to look at trends.
- More User Interaction – The appeal of blogging has always been the interaction that is possible with the author and other readers, making the site a conversation station. As bloggers continue to narrow their focus on smaller niches, the interaction seems to get better. If you look at what WordPress is doing with their acquisitions, you can see how user interaction (improved comments, polls, BBPress, etc.) seems to be their focus for the future of their platform.
- Rise in Video Blogging – What this method lacks with SEO (search engines can’t index what is said in a video), it makes up for in personalization. Video posts can be created very quickly with mini-rants and I think readers enjoy video blog posts because they can actually see the author and hear the emotion in their voices. These types of sites can develop a strong following very quickly and don’t rely much on search engines to bring them traffic. Video blogging can also be integrated into a standard blog, giving people the best of both worlds.
I also believe we will continue to see fewer blogs in the traditional sense, meaning a standard website where the homepage displays a loop of the most recent posts. More than likely some sort of hybrid will emerge over the next couple years, which is a cross between a Content Management System (CMS) and a blog.
What do you think? What is the future of blogging?
Kyle Eslick
Kyle Eslick is the founder and primary author of WordPress Hacks. You can learn more about him at KyleEslick.com or you can follow his personal tweets here.
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The open media revolution is as important to our age as the printing press was to the world almost six centuries ago. Blogging won’t die, but perhaps needs to be refined a bit.
I started blogging because I thought I could contribute. I found a load of web standards blogs and I thought that was something I could get into. From there is transitioned into other things.
My primary motivation is still reputational. I do it because I like it, and I want to be respected for something outside of my day job.
I think the future will see a reaction against the make money quick brigade. I think people will still aim to make something of it but more and more I think people will look toward getting hired by a serious media company as a serious journalist.
I honestly don’t see blogging dying at any time in the future. Now we can all publish, anyone that wants to can. That must be too big a draw to resist surely?
I agree with you, blogging is far from dying.
One thing that might happen though, the small blogs will shut down and the big blogs will get way bigger.
Just my opinion.
There’s a lot of people who starts to blog for the wrong reason, but I don’t see blogging dying soon. Mosttraditionnal websites are boring compared to blogs, which are updated often, which have comments…
Personally, I’d love to make good money with blogging, but that’s not my only goal. If I don’t make money, no problem, it’s already cool to share knowledges with interesting people.
No, I don’t believe blogging is dying or even close to dying. I agree that many people get into it for the wrong reasons as you say. That, and people change. There was a time when I used to blog something every day and if I missed a day I’d go into mental anguish. I still want to post more frequently, but I don’t beat myself up over it anymore.
I think you will see the “Get Rich Quick Make money fast” bloggers wither out. You are already seeing that since many of them come out with garbage content.
I stated in my blog that blogging is important for underrepresented groups that are ignored by the MSM.
http://justinleon.com/2008/10/bloggingisnotdead/
Video blogging on the other hand is not as openly embraced in internet society. On a place like YouTube, a vast majority of viewers seeking content watch pirated tv shows or other crap.
Vloggers are pretty much ignored unless you go to places like Viddler or Vimeo.
As you said, I think the people who wanted to get rich with their blogs (and most of them were pretty empty anyway) are getting sick of it. Good.
I also appreciate the fact that a lot of personal blog are taking an interesting turn, as I feel blogging to becoming more focused.
I do believe in blogging and I do think it has a future!
Well, I can assure you that the ones who will carry on blogging are those who bothered leaving comments and have a gravatar. As for why I will continue doing it, definitely not about money, but about creating a web persona of me…… isn’t that the promise in the first place?
No, blogging is far from dying. 101% sure about that.
I too doubt blogging is dying, in fact, I bet it’s just the opposite. Most people I know seem to not really understand what a blog is. To many of them, it’s just a website.
I think as time goes on, more people will become Internet savvy and we will actually see an increase in bloggers. What I think part of the problem is now is that the people who’ve been blogging for a few years have basically seen everything that’s written (over and over again) and they crave something new. We have to take a step back and remember that not everyone has read that SEO article.
Also, although zeroing in on one particular niche for your articles can help, I find many times being too focused is limiting. I blog about being an online entrepreneur so I talk about blogging, sitemaps, seo, marketing, customer service, etc.
That’s quite a range of topics some might think and could turn some people away. I feel, however, if someone wants to learn a trade, they need to know all the aspects of it. However, like you said, focusing on one topic does seem to have some advantages.
We just need to keep in mind that most people in this world view blogs as just another website. And once you have that insight, you can speak to them in their language. Remember who your target customers are: bloggers or others?
I have a very small blog, but it is in a niche market – clay and pottery. Potters are just starting to catch onto marketing and networking opportunities provided by the internet and blogging. Many still don’t even have websites or if they do, they’re icky geocities cite ones or similar.
I have had so many opportunities come my way because of my blog and visitors are on the upswing. My blog is almost 3 years old now and has changed tremendously in content and my platform has changed as I learned more about the medium – from MSN Spaces to Blogger to wordpress.com to finally hosting my own wordpress blog (which I love)
I don’t think blogging is dying, but I do think that it’s not for everyone. People who start for the wrong reasons or don’t enjoy writing, reading, commenting and exchanging links have blogs that either stagnate or fail to grow (unless you’re a superstar).
I do use Facebook and Twitter as extensions of my blog, but not as a replacement.
On my blog, I write about clay, pottery, techniques, glaze recipes, environmental aspects of making pottery, buying local handcrafted items, and sometimes family/personal stuff. While I’m no expert, occasionally I write about social media, blogging, SEO and how it affects pottery related blogs. But, mainly my audience is other potters and clay enthusiasts – and I have been given opportunities to teach and show my work because of my site. It takes perseverance and a willingness to invest the time it takes to create good content.
Yeah, as long as people continue to comment on blog posts, and continue to blog and care for fun, I think that it will be very, very far from dying.
Well, I look at it as great news. It might not be that blogging is dying, but that splogging is dying. There may be a little bit of a decrease in activity among legitimate blogs, but that’s okay too. I mean, if Twitter or Facebook suits their purposes than they don’t need a blog. It makes more room for those of us who are or want to be really serious about blogging in the full sense of the word – or using blogs to their full capabilities.
Thanks very much for the post, it was great too hear about this change of vectors and your perspective on it. It also makes future blogging strategies seem more clear cut. I could never manage a full vlog – it just wouldn’t work for me and my purposes. But spicing up my own blogs with some original video, well, that’s another matter. In fact after reading your post I am rekindling my interest in getting a video camera.